It’s pretty mind-blowing watching Giannis Antetokounmpo play for Greece after he dominated the NBA on his way to a well-earned MVP award last season. Giannis is everything for the Milwaukee Bucks, who had the league’s best record in 2018-19. He’s the premier scorer, the premier playmaker, the top defender, the best weapon in every circumstance. His game envelopes his team and the opponent. He is, in many ways, the entire focus of a gameplan for both his team and their opponent.
Giannis Antetokounmpo in FIBA isn’t as scary as the NBA version of Giannis — yet
Greece still doesn’t quite know how to use the NBA MVP, at least not yet.
That’s not really what the FIBA version of Giannis has been at this point.
Greece has a proud basketball history, built with a distinct style of rough-and-tumble play. Positionality is traditional: point guards bring the ball up and execute the offense, taller players set picks and post up. Giannis is really tall, so that’s the role he’s been given. In the second half of Greece’s important win over New Zealand on Thursday, Antetokounmpo was the featured roll man in a steady diet of pick-and-roll action involving former backup NBA point guard Nick Calathes. When that wasn’t happening, Antetokounmpo posted up or slid into the dunker position along the baseline.
Outside of rare fast breaks, Giannis never brought the ball up the court or initiated the offense. That wasn’t his role.
That was different from the first half, where it seemed Giannis had been empowered a little more to float and create — most of his six assists in the game came early. As the game got tight, with Greece’s tournament future on the line, Hellas reverted to the usual method. It worked, even if Giannis looked a lot less dangerous in the second half.
Antetokounmpo had his best overall game of the World Cup by far, putting up 24-10-6 in 30 minutes. New Zealand had to pack the paint and send help every time Calathes found Giannis in the lane, and that gravity helped Antetokounmpo rack up those six assists after totaling just two in Greece’s first two games. But the fact NBA Giannis came out only for a peek and disappeared back behind FIBA Giannis for the second half is a little discouraging. This is perhaps the best basketball player in the entire world, and certainly the best player in this tournament. Unleash him!
It’s surely good news for the United States that Greek coach Thanasis Skourtopoulos is still trying to figure out how to use Giannis. The teams play on Saturday in the second group stage (8:30 a.m. ET, ESPN+). It might as well be a knockout game for Greece: if they lose, they won’t make the quarterfinals next week. The United States has a bit more leeway — lose to Greece, and they’d have to beat Brazil on Monday and pray for the tiebreakers to work out. It’s a high stakes game.
Greece is substantially better than Turkey, Japan, and the Czech Republic, the teams the Americans have beaten so far. The thing is Greece could be even better if NBA Giannis were around.
This is a new challenge for the Greek national team. Giannis played for the senior team in both the 2014 World Championship and the 2015 EuroBasket tournament, but Antetokounmpo was nothing like he is now in those days. In the 2014 Worlds, Giannis was more of a novelty mind-bender coming off of his rookie NBA season. In 2015, only a little had changed — we all knew he had a chance at greatness, but it hadn’t manifested.
This is all uncharted territory for Greece, who usually relies on depth, grit, and familiarity to contend for medals. They still have some depth, lots of grit, and some familiarity. But they also have the best player in the tournament. Skourtopoulos has to figure out how to really allow Giannis’ singular talent to bloom without putting the rest of the team — which provides the shooting, the team defense, the rebounding, the playmaking when Giannis is off-ball or off-court — on standby mode. It’s a tricky balance on a summer team where there’s no much opportunity to try things out, like there is over the course of an 82-game NBA season.
Team USA should be in real trouble in this game. If the Giannis we saw all last NBA season and saw glimpses of in the New Zealand game shows up — if Greece figures out how to unleash NBA Giannis in a FIBA setting — the Americans could very well be toast, in the second group stage, well before the medal round.
But will that end up happening?
